Hi-tech soccer ball could kickstart future World Cup players

Sportswear maker Adidas has created a high-tech soccer ball that could have helped Team USA score more goals during the World Cup — or maybe helped Brazil’s players avoid their brutal, embarrassing loss Tuesday to Germany.

As you’ll see in our video above, the Adidas miCoach Smart Ball looks like a regulation FIFA-approved ball on the outside. It’s even built to survive 7,000 kicks at 60 mph at a steel wall eight feet away, more durability than the regulation game balls Adidas makes for the World Cup.

But on the inside is an integrated system of sensors that detect how hard the ball is kicked, how fast it’s spinning and it’s trajectory. The Bluetooth-enabled ball then sends the data to a mobile app (for now, only available for iOS devices) to give players real-time feedback on whether their kicks are on target or off line.

The app also becomes a virtual coach that can show players how to kick the ball with a certain bone in their feet to create more power, to launch a knuckle ball at the keeper or to bend it like … well, Beckham.

Chronicle tech reporter Joe Garofoli, a veteran recreation soccer league player, learned a few new tricks from kicking the Smart Ball around during a demo this week in Yerba Buena Gardens.

The ball is the product of more than four years of research by Adidas engineers in Portland, Ore., and is another example of how technologists are trying to bring the power of computers to ordinary objects – from watches to doorknobs.

The Smart Ball is also the latest in a slew of tech-infused sports equipment that uses data analysis to help players improve their games, like the 94Fifty Smart Sensor basketball or the Zepp golf club, tennis racket and baseball bat sensors we wrote about in December.

Adidas has a lot riding on the World Cup — the company is one of the tournament’s biggest sponsors, and its logo adorns the official jerseys of Team Argentina, which squares off Wednesday against the rival Nike-sponsored Netherlands.

But Christian DiBenedetto, Adidas’s senior innovation director, said in an interview in San Francisco this week that his team’s goal was not just to help World Cup teams. Instead, Adidas is marketing the Smart Ball to a larger audience of individual players, especially those in youth and recreational leagues, who want to learn technique, not technology.

“What we’re trying to focus on is taking the science out of it,” DiBenedetto said. “We don’t want you to have to understand what makes a good kick. We want to put that all in the background and give you what you need to be a better kicker.”

The Smart Ball isn’t cheap — it retails for $299 at Apple stores or through the Adidas web site. But it might kick start the career of a future Lionel Messi.